Workout gloves can be helpful in several ways, making it safer for you to grip heavy dumbbells and weight bars. But there are some disadvantages to wearing gloves as well. Wearing workout gloves is a personal choice based on your workout style and your health priorities. There are several fabric choices, including leather, neoprene, cotton with a reinforced grip and nylon. Leather, cotton and neoprene allow your hands to breathe during workouts, but nylon does not. It is, however, easy to wash, as is neoprene and cotton. Leather is usually thicker than the other choices, offering more protection and lasting longer.

Grip

Wearing workout gloves provides a more secure grip. As your body heat increases, your hands can get sweaty and slippery. This can cause you to fall off a pullup bar, drop a dumbbell or other heavy weights. Gloves keep the sweat off the exercise equipment and provide non-slip grips. This kind of protection helps you focus your exercise on the right muscles instead of focusing on your hands.

Soft Hands

Working out can be rough on your hands, causing blisters and calluses to form. Using gloves offers a layer of protection for your hands, keeping them smooth and free of calluses. Preventing blisters is key, as blisters can pop and get infected or require you to skip lifting weights for several days until the painful blister heals.

Wrist Support

Many workout gloves slide over the wrist to the top of the forearm, providing additional support for those sometimes weak areas. You can strain your wrist easily as you bend your wrist forward and backward while holding heavy weights. The additional support of the gloves helps prevent these injuries and keeps you in the gym instead of recovering at home.

Disadvantage

The biggest disadvantage in using workout gloves is the gloves don't help you improve the strength of your grip. They help you grip, but they don't increase your hand-gripping strength. This makes it harder to work out without the gloves once you're accustomed to using them. If you want to increase your grip strength significantly while lifting weights, use chalk to help your grip on occasion rather than using the gloves.